David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

28 July 2016

Getthe very first look at Painting. More Painting! Led by ACCA’s Artistic Director, Max Delany, this special exhibition preview is for primary, secondary, tertiary and museum educators. Bring a group along from 4.30pm and enjoy a drink from ACCA’s bar. Max will lead a walk and talk through the exhibition beginning at 5pm.

This is a unique opportunity to see a major ACCA exhibition just as the last canvases are hung and finishing touches are being made by the installation crew.

20 July 2016

Associated PressMAY 20, 2010

PARIS, FRANCE — A lone thief stole five paintings possibly worth hundreds of millions of euros, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday.

The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower. Investigators have cordoned off the museum, in one of the French capital's most tourist-frequented neighborhoods.

The museum's security system was disabled, and a single masked intruder was caught on a video surveillance camera, according to Christophe Girard, deputy culture secretary at Paris City Hall.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the intruder was operating alone, Girard told reporters.He said three guards were on duty overnight but "they saw nothing."

Paris art heist: This June 30, 2006 photo shows an employee at the Cantini museum in Marseille, southwestern France, looking at the painting "L'Olivier prés de l'Estaque" (The Olive tree near l'Estaque) by French painter Georges Braque during the exhibition Braque and landscape, from l'Estaque to Varengeville". Five works including paintings by modern masters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and "L'Olivier prés de l'Estaque", have been stolen from the Paris-run Musee d'Art Moderne.

Michael Craig-MartinAn Oak Tree1973

An Oak Tree consists of an ordinary glass of water placed on a small glass shelf of the type normally found in a bathroom, which is attached to the wall above head height. Craig-Martin composed a series of questions and answers to accompany the objects. In these, the artist claims that the glass of water has been transformed into an oak tree. When An Oak Tree was first exhibited, in 1974 at Rowan Gallery, London, the text was presented printed on a leaflet. It was subsequently attached to the wall below and to the left of the shelf and glass. Craig-Martin’s text deliberately asserts the impossible. The questions probe the obvious impossibility of the artist’s assertion with such apparently valid complaints as: ‘haven’t you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?’ and ‘but the oak tree only exists in the mind’. The answers maintain conviction while conceding that ‘the actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water ... Just as it is imperceptible, it is also inconceivable’. An Oak Tree is based on the concept of transubstantiation, the notion central to the Catholic faith in which it is believed that bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ while retaining their appearances of bread and wine. The ability to believe that an object is something other than its physical appearance indicates requires a transformative vision. This type of seeing (and knowing) is at the heart ofconceptual thinking processes, by which intellectual and emotional values are conferred on images and objects. An Oak Tree uses religious faith as a metaphor for this belief system which, for Craig-Martin, is central to art. He has explained:

I considered that in An Oak Tree I had deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element, belief that is the confident faith of the artist in his capacity to speak and the willing faith of the viewer in accepting what he has to say. In other words belief underlies our whole experience of art: it accounts for why some people are artists and others are not, why some people dismiss works of art others highly praise, and why something we know to be great does not always move us.

(Quoted in Michael Craig-Martin: Landscapes, [p.20].)

Craig-Martin was born in Dublin, raised in the United States and has been living and working in England since 1966. His early work of the late 1960s was influenced by such American Minimalistsculptors as Robert Morris (born 1931), to whose work he applied his own brand of Conceptual thinking. His first exhibited works were series of hinged boxes that appeared functional but were impossible to use. Apparently impossible balancing was often used to create visual puns. In Six Foot Balance with Four Pounds of Paper 1970 (Tate T07975), the image of a four-pound weight printed onto four pounds of paper hung in equilibrium with the weight itself, suggesting an equality of some kind between image and object. In the early 1970s, in a series of works utilising mirrors, Craig-Martin explored relationships between physical and psychological perception. In Faces1971, installed at the Tate Gallery as part of 7 Exhibitions in 1972, viewers entering booths, which each contained a mirror, were likely to encounter the face of another visitor in another booth where they expected to find their own. Conviction 1973 (Tate T01764) consists of a series of eight small mirrors attached to the wall above eight statements, written directly on the wall. The phrases ‘I recognise myself’, ‘I know who I am’, ‘I understand why I am as I am’ and ‘I accept myself’ alternate with question marks undermining the certainty of the statements. Craig-Martin intends these to set off processes of questioning in the viewer as he alternately looks at his reflection and reads the words and question marks. The two separate activities of seeing - which relies simply on ocular vision - and reading - which depends on an underlying structure - are oppositional forces in this work. With An Oak Tree, Craig-Martin introduces a third element, that of belief or faith.

An Oak Tree was a watershed in the artist’s work. He has explained: ‘everything before that was trying to take the whole structure of the thing apart’ and ‘everything that comes after the Oak Treeshould be seen as me trying to put the pieces together again’. (Quoted in Flash Art, no.152, May-June 1990, p.132.). In his subsequent works, such as Reading with Globe 1980 (Tate T03102), Craig-Martin established a language of drawn objects and planes of colour relating to intellectual processes and physical experience. Following the logic of Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the ready-made, which was established in 1917 by titling a urinal Fountain (remade 1964, TateT07573), Craig-Martin sees everyday objects as models for works of art. He has stated: ‘I try to get rid of as much meaning as I can. People’s need to find meanings, to create associations, renders this impossible. Meaning is both persistent and unstable.’ (Quoted in Michael Craig-Martin: A Retrospective 1968-1989, p.73.)

15 July 2016

Today, in Sydney, the winner of the 2016 Archibald Prize for Portraiture will be announced.

The Archibald Prize is awarded annually to the best portrait, 'preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia'. This open competition is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW

Meanwhile, in Paris, there are just three more days to visit the exhibition Apollinaire, le regard du poète at the Musée de l’Orangerie.The exhibition poster features Giorgio de Chirico's"Premonitory portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire", 1914 :

It is almost one hundred years since Guillaume Apollinaire died at thirty-eight in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. The many portraits of him painted by his contemporaries - Rousseau, Picasso, de Chirico, Chagall, Man Ray, Metzinger, Picabia, Vlaminck, Larionov, Marie Laurencin, Robert Delaunay, Modigliani, Dali, Duchamp and others - attest to the extraordinary person he must have been.
Picasso and Duchamp with Apollinaire at their headwaters, flowing into the twentieth century.
Amazing!

"So the optimistic note that I end on is that I think the Australian population is fairly savvy about the importance of our linkages with our own region, the great significance of the mining industry, and indeed any industry that makes a contribution to the generation of wealth and that would have been the source of continuing reassurance and continuing comfort to us all – and it is a reminder, once again, that context is everything."

Referring to the Vietnam War as 'the great divisive issue', Howard said it was during the last years of Menzies Prime Ministership that the crucial commitment was made to send an infantry battalion to Vietnam.

"I asked myself the rhetorical question 'was that the right decision or the wrong decision'. I said in the book that I'd have taken the same decision as Menzies took."

"Context is everything, when you look atdecisions like that and why it's now quite possible to look back and say well that was a mistake.

"But you have to ask yourself, how would you have reacted in 1965 with the information, the assessments, the attitudes and the values at that time.

"If you're looking at causation in Iraq to current events, you really have to look at those events since the surge in 2008-2009," he said.

As for his own 'Vietnam' moment, Howard said he doesn't regret intervention in Iraq.

"I believed there were weapons of mass destruction...the balance of advice that we had said that," he said.

detailA Person Looks At A Work Of Art/someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA

Last week in the UK, Sir John Chilcot released his committee's findings of the Iraq Inquiry into the British Government's 2003 decision to go to war in Iraq.

Should the UK have gone to war in Iraq? Did it have the necessary legal basis and intelligence to do so? And did it mess up once involved militarily in the country? Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry finally published its report this morning, and these are the key conclusions that he reached in his statement:1. While military action against Saddam Hussein ‘might have been necessary at some point’, in March 2003, he posed no imminent threat, the strategy of containment could have been continued for ‘some time’, and the majority of the Security Council supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring’. ‘Military action at that time was not a last resort,’ Sir John said in his statement.2. The way in which the government decided that there was a legal basis for military action was ‘far from satisfactory’.3. ‘Flawed intelligence and assessments’ formed the basis of policy on Iraq. Chilcot said ‘they were not challenged, and they should have been’. The judgements on the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were ‘presented with a certainty that was not justified’.4. Planning for a post-Saddam Iraq was ‘wholly inadequate’. The Inquiry took a dim view of Tony Blair’s claim that the difficulties encountered in the country could not have been known in advance, arguing that 'we do not agree that hindsight is required. The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and Al Qaida activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion.’

Today Mr Howard acknowledged the Chilcot Report touched on some issues regarding the political justification for the Iraq War.

He backed Mr Blair, saying “there was no lie”.

Asked whether it was time Australia held a similar inquiry, Mr Howard said we had “held a number of inquires already”.

“We are all informed by subsequent events but as somebody who’s been in a decision-making position in relation to these matters, I make the obvious point that you make judgements based on the information available at the time,” he said.

“Context is everything, as a wise man once said, and it’s very important to keep that in mind.”

Mr Howard said it was both the judgement of the UK’s JIC, MI6 and US intelligence agencies that Iraq did have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

“In the years that have gone by there’s been this constant claim that we went to war based on a lie,” he said.

“There was no lie. There were errors in intelligence but there was no lie and can I also make the observation that the Chilcot Report imposes a standard of beyond doubt.

“Can I offer the view that when you’re dealing with intelligence it’s very, very hard to find a situation where advice is beyond doubt.

“Sometimes if you wait for advice that is beyond doubt you can end up with very disastrous consequences.”

That evening John Howard also went on ABC.TV 'Lateline'. And again he incanted "Context is everything." Tony Jones challenged him on that.

JOHN HOWARD: Yeah, but I can tell you about a meeting I had with Sir Richard Dearlove, who was the head of MI6, at Stoke Lodge, the residence of the Australian High Commissioner in London, in which he showed me the latest transcripts of conversations and repeated his very strong view that Iraq did have stockpiles of weapons. So let's - let's put the perspective that you're in my position as Prime Minister of the country and I'm getting advice about the possession of weapons of mass destruction from intelligence agencies. Now, I know that has turned out to be flawed. I know that. I accept that. Nobody can argue with that. But as somebody once said, context is everything and the context ...TONY JONES: But Mr Howard, we're trying to find the context here when it comes to why the peaceful option of going with Blix was ignored. And here's what David Manning ...

JOHN HOWARD: It wasn't ignored.

TONY JONES: Here's - well, hang on. Let me, let me just...

JOHN HOWARD: It was assessed to have been something that wasn't going to work.

TONY JONES: Let me just read you what Chilcot says David - Sir David Manning's advice at the breakfast meeting was to the people round the table. He said Blair should focus in public on the underlying message that there was not a fundamental change in attitude, but he should privately challenge the idea that the peaceful option might work and publicly state that it's dead in the water. So, they're looking at Blix being optimistic and they're trying to work out how we can get that out of the public space.

JOHN HOWARD: Well that's the interpretation that you place on that.

TONY JONES: Chilcot.

Context is everything : before 2003 and afterIf, as it is said, the first casualty of (the prelude to) war is Truth ("weapons of mass destruction"); and if, as the truism (often attributed to Winston Churchill) states, History is written by the victors, then staking claim to the bounds of a total ("everything") and forgivable context would be a part of that re-construction. In 2003, a bloody-minded John Winston Howard ignored the largest ever public protest movement in Australia to join with George W Bush and Tony Blair to wage war in Iraq.

The more elaborate statement: “It’s déjà vu all over again” appeared in a movie review in the Chicago Tribune in 1966. The singer and comedian Dean Martin starred in a vehicle called “The Silencers” which spoofed the secret-super-spy genre popularized by James Bond extravaganzas. The reviewer was not impressed by the fancy gizmos and the provocative women featured on screen: 2

It’s déjà vu all over again—the usual gaggle of gimmicks [miniature hand grenades disguised as coat buttons, a gun that shoots backwards], and the familiar covey of quail [Stella Stevens, Daliah Lavi, Cyd Charisse, Beverly Adams] that frequently makes the put-on more of a take-off.

This is the earliest known citation for the most common modern version of the saying, and it is listed in the Yale Book of Quotations. 3